The Poggendorff Illusion: A Neurophysiologically Based Hypothesis

Houck, Robert L.; Mefferd, Roy B.

doi:10.2307/1421438

Cited by 9 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…A convincing type of evidence is obtained by removing line segments from the configuration. Removing any element that destroys the obtuse angle greatly attenuates the anomaly, sometimes reversing it; destroying the acute angle has a minor effect (e.g., Houck & Mefferd, 1973;Krantz & Weintraub, 1973;Weintraub & Krantz, 1971).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Poggendorff illusion: Consider all the angles.

Weintraub¹,

Krantz²,

Olson³

1980

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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In the Poggendorff display, which consists of parallel lines interrupting a transversal, one of the two transversal segments was replaced by a dot lying along the parallel. The angle between the remaining transversal segment and the parallels was varied in 15 degree increments, as was the orientation of the transversal with respect to the subject. Subjects set the dot to appear collinear with the transversal. Judgmental errors can be partitioned into additive components, one linearly related to the size of the obtuse angle between transversal and parallels and the other a sinusoidal function of transversal and parallels and the other a sinusoidal function of transversal orientation (collinearity settings err toward the horizontal or vertical, whichever is closer), plus a meridional effect, an interaction term that magnifies the errors of a given obtuse angle as the transversal approaches an oblique orientation.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Poggendorff illusion: Consider all the angles.

Weintraub¹,

Krantz²,

Olson³

1980

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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“…Subsequent research has confirmed that the wings-in variant induces a strong Poggendorff effect and that the wings-out variant produces either a small (Day, 1973) or a reversed effect (Day, 1973;Greist-Bousquet & Schiffman, 1985;Houck & Mefford, 1973;Restle, 1969). …”

mentioning

confidence: 93%

Examination of apparent extent as an explanation of the Poggendorff effect

Trueman

Wilson

1989

Perception & Psychophysics

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The explanation of apparent misalignment in the Poggendorff figure, based on underestimation of the intertransversal distance, was investigated in two experiments. In Experiment 1, subjectsjudged the intertransversal distance in the traditional Poggendorfffigure and two of its variants. The size of the acute angle and the intertransversal distance were manipulated. Half of the subjects made the judgments with the method used by Wilson and Pressey (1976) and the other half made their judgments with the method used by Greist-Bousquet and Schiffman (1981). The results indicated that perceived intertransversal distance was greater with the former method. In Experiment 2, subjects adjusted the transversals to apparent collinearity in the same displays as were used in Experiment 1. The collinearity judgments were transformed to allow comparison with the results of Experiment 1. Comparison of the collinearity judgments with the distance judgments indicated that they did not follow similar trends. For each Poggendorff variant, proportional distance judgments increased as the size of the acute angle increased, and decreased as the intertransversal distance increased. Collinearity judgments did not vary as a function of intertransversal distance. As the size of the acute angle increased, collinearity judgments increased for two of the Poggendorff variants but decreased for the third. It was concluded that the findings did not support the explanation of apparent misalignment based on underestimation ofthe intertransversal distance.The traditional Poggendorff figure, as seen in Figure lA, consists of a transversal separated by two vertical parallel lines. Although the two portions of the transversal are objectively collinear, subjectively they do not appear so. In the example shown in Figure lA, the upper right transversal is judged higher than the linear extension of the lower left transversal. This apparent misalignment of the transversals is referred to as the Poggendorff effect.Judd (1899) was one of the first investigators to discard the popular belief that the Poggendorff effect was one of direction and instead proposed that it was caused by a misjudgment of linear extent or distance. Specifically, Judd suggested that the perceived noncollinearity of the transversals was due to underestimation of the intertransversal distance. The underestimation, according to Judd, was caused by the influence of the components of the Miiller-Lyer figure found within the Poggendorff display. As seen in Figures lB and lC By studying these variations of the Poggendorff figure, Judd (1899) discovered that the wings-in variation resulted in a stronger effect than the wings-out variation. Because This research is based on a Master's thesis submitted to the University of New Brunswick by M. T. Trueman.

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“…For subtended angles it is the angle vertex. Removing or modifying such an intersection for Poggendorff displays and their variants (Houck & Mefferd, 1973; Weintraub & Krantz, 1971) can drastically alter tracking errors. The mistracking is labeled cognitive because it can occur in the absence of eye movements (Pritchard, 1958) and perhaps because mistracking errors are related to the perceived size of the gap traversed by the track, rather than to retinal size (Tong & Weintraub, 1974).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perceptual plane geometry: Collinearity judgments probe the perceived orientation of an angle's sides.

Weintraub¹,

Brown²

1986

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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The task was to position a dot to lie one line length beyond the vertex of an angle by mentally extending one line segment forming the angle (and later the other line segment). Eight angles, variously oriented, provided judgmental errors attributable to the size of the subtended angle and line orientation. Collinearity errors are consistent with the hypothesis that the sizes of all subtended angles are underestimated. Horizontal-vertical assimilation describes the line-orientation effect. The largest error component is associated with the interaction of the two independent variables. Judgmental errors were modeled by a set of theoretically meaningful additive terms. Modeling was facilitated by symmetry assumptions (associated with odd and even mathematical functions) about the absolute magnitude and sign of judgmental errors that lead to the comparison of judgments derived from "interesting pairs" of stimuli.

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The Poggendorff Illusion: A Neurophysiologically Based Hypothesis

Cited by 9 publications

References 45 publications

The Poggendorff illusion: Consider all the angles.

The Poggendorff illusion: Consider all the angles.

Examination of apparent extent as an explanation of the Poggendorff effect

Perceptual plane geometry: Collinearity judgments probe the perceived orientation of an angle's sides.

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